Posts tagged with "presents"

not ready to stop

I take care of this moment by tak­ing care of myself. That means nour­ish­ing my sense of well-being by spend­ing time with peo­ple who:

  • con­nect with me on an inti­mate lev­el
  • give me their full atten­tion and com­mand mine at the same time
  • under­stand and val­i­date what I’m going through

Normally, the goal is to use the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences from these rela­tion­ships to buffer my emo­tion­al resilience when things get rough, but right now I’m just try­ing to get to the point most peo­ple con­sid­er nor­mal.

It helps when peo­ple make me things like this. I had a Google search box as my brows­er start page for as long as I can remem­ber, until pre­sent­ed with this board full of hap­pi­ness, where every update is rel­e­vant to my inter­ests. Tiana and Genevieve secret­ly col­lect­ed cats for months before giv­ing it to me just because, and some­how there were 91 fol­low­ers before I even made a Pinterest account to fol­low this name­sake board. These are peo­ple who tru­ly under­stand me, and make me feel con­nect­ed even when I’m not with them. This is what I need more of in my life.

sitting in a cafe

We’ll get there some­day, cuz.

I’ve also been reach­ing into my past and search­ing for clo­sure, whether that means giv­ing or receiv­ing for­give­ness. It’s hum­bling to own up to my role in some­one’s pain with­out mak­ing excus­es or lay­ing blame to pro­tect my pride, but being able to do so has giv­en me more amour de soi. Mistakes will be made on my jour­ney, but it does­n’t mean I’m a bad per­son, and it won’t stop me from becom­ing bet­ter.

Seeking res­o­lu­tion does­n’t always end well though. I’m try­ing to under­stand each response as a mes­sage about the true nature of some­one’s role in my life, with­out being caught up in anger. It’s so much eas­i­er to for­give or accept some­one when I start to under­stand their real­i­ty, even if they’ve hurt me rather unde­serv­ing­ly. I final­ly feel like I’m get­ting a han­dle on my inter­ac­tions with peo­ple, instead of con­stant­ly being at the whim of their behav­iour.

dog by the door

It’s been a peri­od of such tremen­dous growth in myself and devel­op­ment in my rela­tion­ships that it feels like I’ve been giv­en a reprieve. I’ve been work­ing on all the lit­tle things I said I’d take care of when I was bet­ter, one day at a time. Just know­ing that I’m improv­ing in some small way is often enough to keep me going by itself.

I still occa­sion­al­ly get caught up on the idea that I need to be per­fect before start­ing down a new path, but Lisa always reminds me that the per­son I am already isn’t so bad. Growing is a grad­ual and life­long process. I can do the best with the per­son I am, and that’ll always be good enough.

thoughtful things

I’ve always believed the best gifts are things we would want but would­n’t buy our­selves cause we could­n’t jus­ti­fy the pur­chase (regard­less of how much it costs), or some­thing hand­made by the giv­er. Good gifts also hap­pen just because, not nec­es­sar­i­ly due to a birth­day or hol­i­day. Lisa says this ide­al makes me an intim­i­dat­ing gift-giv­er. ____ used to call me a pro­fes­sion­al con­sumer, cause I have a ten­den­cy to pur­chase what I want with­out hes­i­ta­tion, which I imag­ine makes me even hard­er to shop for.

Recently, peo­ple have been giv­ing me awe­some things for absolute­ly no rea­son at all, and each gift is thought­ful, prac­ti­cal, and just my taste. It must be real­ly hard to find presents that will make me hap­py, but that just makes them all the more spe­cial when they do.

cat stuff

These were in my mail­box one night. The event was actu­al­ly a strip-spelling com­pe­ti­tion, and Shawn won “best strip­per”, the reward being the CD of cat purring. The oth­er guy won the “best speller” award and got the book. They had to fol­low him out of the cafe and ask him for it, cause it was total­ly meant for me obvi­ous­ly. Shawn has said I’m a cat for as long as I’ve known him.

double wall mini tea cups

I had tea with Heather G in a cafe last win­ter, and we had a con­ver­sa­tion about design and how sat­is­fy­ing it felt to hold these mini teacups. Somehow, she remem­bered and found them and bought me a set. They’re mouth-blown so each one is unique, and insu­lat­ed by dou­ble-wall borosil­i­cate glass.

book safe

Lisa got me this book safe, made out of an edi­tion of Ernest Hemingway’s Selected Letters, for secrets big and small. The choice of what book to use in mak­ing a book safe is very impor­tant, as it has to blend in with a library col­lec­tion, but also not be so recent or inter­est­ing as to make some­one pick­ing it up.

It has lit­tle mag­nets embed­ded in the frame and cov­er to make sure it stays closed even when stored ver­ti­cal. This lit­tle detail was what swayed her deci­sion to go with this par­tic­u­lar crafter, and some­thing you learn is very impor­tant if you ever try to keep your stash hid­den from…uhhh…cats.

People Being Nice To Me

Tao Te Ching cover

Louise gave me a gor­geous copy of the Tao Te Ching. It’s trans­lat­ed by James Legge, with clas­sic Chinese art from the Cleveland Museum of Art. What’s espe­cial­ly cool is that the fonts used for the titles is Avenir, which is the same font I used for my sec­ond Tao tat­too.

Tao Te Ching page 1

It’s per­fect because I feel like I’ve strayed from the path late­ly. It’s been a few weeks since I picked up the book and read a few vers­es.

Tao Te Ching page 2

I real­ly like the fact that many of the pages have no vers­es, and only art­work. It’s nice enough that I’ll prob­a­bly keep it out on my cof­fee table, instead of in my book­shelf hid­den in a clos­et1.

Bamboo bookmark

She also gave me this bam­boo book­mark, with a Confucian say­ing on it. I find it fun­ny because Confucianism oppos­es Taoism, though they both have very good ideas.

Continue read­ing “People Being Nice To Me”…

  1. Not that I don’t like to dis­play books, I just pre­fer to keep a neat house. []

Feather Fountain Pen

Feather fountain pen

Pat and Jen bought me this feath­er foun­tain pen set from their hon­ey­moon to Europe. It comes from an Italian sculp­ture store, Fabris Giuliana in Venice, Italy.

Feather fountain pen writing

The nib is super fine; I don’t think I’ve ever owned a foun­tain pen with such a small nib, which is per­fect, because I tend to have small hand­writ­ing. You can’t even tell which direc­tion the stroke is going. So far it writes a lit­tle rough and scratchy, but with enough use, the nib will break in to my writ­ing style.

I’ve always enjoyed writ­ing. Not just the con­cept of putting ideas into more a tan­gi­ble medi­um, but the act of writ­ing itself, whether it’s on a key­board by night, or flow­ing lines on a sheet of paper.